SAN ANTONIO — “The Returned” may debut on Halloween, but this exquisite French horror series seems more fitting entertainment for Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.

The beautifully shot and emotionally unsettling eight-part drama is a zombie tale of sorts, since it focuses on what happens when a group of people return home to their idyllic French mountain village ... after being dead for years.

However, “The Returned” bears little resemblance to “The Walking Dead” or most other representations of zombies. There's minimal gore, and the dead who return don't have the look of ragged, ravenous monsters. They appear normal, even attractive, and don't feed on the living, at least not in the obvious way.

The supernatural series still manages to give you shivers, though — thanks to plenty of weird occurrences and the knowledge that one of those “returned” is a cannibalistic killer who preyed on women some years back.

“The Returned” premieres at 8 p.m. Thursday and will air every Thursday through Dec. 19 on the Sundance Channel. Created by Fabrice Gobert and based on the 2004 feature film “Les Revenants” by Robin Campillo, it begins with a field trip-bound bus filled with children, including pretty redhead Camille (the luminous Yara Pillartz). In the blink of an eye, the happy journey nosedives into tragedy when the bus inexplicably swerves over the edge of a mountain road.

Jump to several years in the future and a group of recovering parents gathered at a community refuge center to discuss a memorial to honor the crash victims.

Meanwhile, we notice a girl in her mid-teens making her way up the mountain: Camille, the redhead from the bus. She hasn't aged a day. Eventually she arrives home, entering without ceremony, as if nothing has happened. Declaring that she's starving, the girl roots around the kitchen while her mom stares at her in complete shock.

Camille has no memory of what happened and no idea that she has been away for four years; most important, she doesn't seem to realize she's dead.

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Soon she becomes all too aware that she's “different,” as we watch various members of her family and village react to her homecoming — including her terrified twin sister Lena (Jenna Thiam) ... who, now four years older, is a much more provocative teenage presence. There have been lots of stories about twins, but this one struck me as unique.

Other notable post-death returns:

Simon (Pierre Perrier). After dying 10 years earlier, the soulfully handsome musician seeks out his fiancée to continue their life together, unaware that she's done her best to move on. Not only is she raising a daughter, but she is living with a new man. Worse, the latter is a jealous and controlling police officer bent on keeping Simon away — even if he has to kill him a second time.

Victor (Swann Nambotin). This young, peculiar boy met a violent end more than three decades earlier and latches on to a female stranger for reasons that never are completely clear.

Serge (Guillaume Gouix). The one clear-cut figure of terror in the series, Serge is a serial killer who reappears after seven years of quiet. He resumes his heinous knife attacks, which include eating the internal organs of his female victims.

As their neighbors try to make sense of these returns, other strange phenomena occur — disturbing power outages and problems with the dam that threaten the town's water supply. Moreover, weird wounds and marks of deterioration begin appearing on the faces and bodies of both the living and the dead.

“The Returned” isn't what you'd call Halloween spook fare; this chiller is more intriguing than scary.

I also wouldn't recommend it to folks who require tidy solutions; it leaves viewers with more questions than answers.

Still, it's as rich a TV portrait as you'll find of a small town hit by the startling realization that mortality may not be a certainty for humans after all. Not only is it full of vivid characters, moving performances and stunning visuals, but it's executed with the sort of elegance that the French are famous for.

Jeanne Jakle's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays in mySA, and she blogs at Jakle's Jacuzzi on mySA.com. Email her at jjakle@express-news.net.